How Universities Unwittingly Undermine the Case for Evolution

Victor Joecks on Aug 24, 2026

Most higher education institutions don't adhere to the theory of evolution. Sure, they say they believe in it, but look at their actions.

In recent weeks, the career of former Cambridge University professor Jason Arday unraveled. He wasn't a household name, but he was an academic superstar with a fairy-tale origin story. He claimed his autism and other developmental delays kept him from speaking until he was 11. He said he couldn't read until 18. Yet at 37, he became the youngest black professor in the school's storied history. Further, he claimed to have once run 30 marathons in 35 days to fundraise for charitable causes. He claimed to have raised more than 5 million pounds sterling over two decades. This is only a sampling of his outlandish claims.

Arday's biography began to unravel after Nathan Cofnas from Ghent University presented ample evidence of plagiarism in Arday's academic work. Other scholars had previously raised similar concerns, but Cambridge seemed uninterested in finding out if its star professor was a fraud. Sadly, Arday committed suicide after the public learned about the scope of his lies.

It's obvious now that Cambridge as an institution and dozens, if not hundreds, of academics judged Arday on his skin color, not his academic merits. They so desperately wanted more racial diversity that they ignored obvious untruths that any high school dropout would have called out immediately. Only in academia can one be so celebrated for wearing "The Emperor's New Clothes."

But this issue goes far beyond a single school in England. For years, American universities have been lowering standards in pursuit of racial diversity. In some cases, they blatantly discriminated against white and Asian applicants. In other cases, they eliminated standardized test scores in admissions. Earlier this month, a math professor at University of California, Berkeley shared how that decision has led to her teaching students who are "five to eight years behind in mathematics."

Now, think about the theory of evolution, which is ubiquitous on college campuses. Perhaps the only thing rarer than a conservative professor is one who believes, like I do, that God created the heavens and the earth.

Evolution posits that life evolved from simple organisms into increasingly complex animals, like eagles, dolphins and human beings. This process happened by natural selection, not divine direction. Leave aside that believing everything and everyone came from no one and nothing requires a leap of faith larger than a child jumping over the Grand Canyon.

"Natural selection is sometimes summed up as 'survival of the fittest' because the 'fittest' organisms -- those most suited to their environment -- are the ones that reproduce most successfully, and are most likely to pass on their traits to the next generation," National Geographic states.

The survival of the fittest is a supposedly unstoppable natural process, uncreated and undirected, that evolutionists claim has occurred for billions of years.

Yet, universities have consciously rejected it. These once elite colleges should prioritize intellectual merit. But with some exceptions, they have long put other things before academic fitness.

The obvious rejoinder is that human beings aren't mere animals, driven solely by instinct and genetics. We have a moral compass. We are willing to die for principles, not just to protect our offspring. We make conscious decisions to prioritize different values.

Those things are all obviously true because we are fundamentally different from animals. That's intellectually honest for a Christian or other theist to say. How do atheists arrive there? Most want to live under the conclusions of theism while rejecting their intellectual basis. Or as apologist Frank Turek put it, atheists keep "stealing from God" concepts like morality.

Look at what's happening in universities. "Survival of the fittest" is taught in the classroom, but rejected throughout the rest of campus.

That's not mere hypocrisy. It's evidence of a worldview that doesn't hold up in the real world.

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Victor Joecks is a columnist for the Las Vegas Review-Journal and host of the Sharpening Arrows podcast. Email him at vjoecks@reviewjournal.com or follow @victorjoecks on X. To find out more about Victor Joecks and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

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